part of the answer is last week harry reid and speaker boehner met, i understand, and harry reid, the democratic leader in the senate, majority leader, said, look, let's postpone this for a year and literally said to john boehner, you can't let this moment go by. i don't think boehner wants to let it go by, but he took a real hit on the tax increases for the rich when they did the fiscal cliff negotiations. another one main this sequence. they won't give, at least at this point. it truly is government at its worst. >> so andrew ross sorkin, play this out for us. if they put this off, is anyone ever going to take washington seriously again, and what's at stake? >> does anybody take them seriously? >> 9% of americans do. >> the 9%. >> that's probably a fair issue. one, what does it do to the economy in the long term and short term? most economists now are saying, as bad as the defense industry believes it's going to be, as bad as you could argue it's going to be for some of the poorest people in this country, if you have the discussion we were having during the commercial break about kr